GTO (Game-Theory Optimal): This playing style is where you essentially attempt to play perfect poker yourself, which in turn only allows for your opponents to make mistakes against you (which is where almost all of your profit will be derived from). The notion that poker should respect every player’s ability to play exactly how they want to, even if that’s to wear shades and a headscarf while playing push-fold pre-flop poker and GTO. GTO – GTO or game theory optimal is an unexploitable poker strategy based on mathematics and Nash Equilibrium that has arisen in the last number of years. When playing a GTO strategy you cannot be beaten in the long run, only break even against another GTO strategy. There’s a buzz word in the poker world these days that you may have heard, but many new players aren’t yet familiar with it. That buzz is GTO. GTO stands for Game Theory Optimal. What it means is using an unexploitable strategy, which cannot be countered by your opponent.

1. Gto Definition For Poker
2. Poker Gto Definition

So how would you beat an opponent playing GTO Rock, Paper, Scissors? Well, you’d have to deviate from time to time. If you know your opponent is going to throw Rock 33% of the time and you see them throw Rock five times in a row, you can be fairly certain that Rock won’t show up very often in the next few throws. You now have a 50% chance they will throw Paper and a 50% chance they will throw Scissors. Your optimal strategy here would be to throw Scissors.

• Your Scissors vs Opponent’s Scissors = a tie.
• Your Scissors vs Opponent’s Paper = a win for you.

You could play your Scissors strategy until your opponent throws a Rock, then revert back to GTO strategy. Once you see a pattern again you can deviate from GTO to create a winning strategy.

You’re probably thinking, “Great, I’m a Rock, Paper, Scissors pro…what does this have to do with poker?”. Well GTO, in its very basic form, is just the art of perfect balance. Let’s explain in poker terms.

• Rock = Raise for value 33%
• Paper = Check 33%
• Scissors = Raise as bluff 33%

Let’s say on the river the above were your three options. Just as in Rock, Paper, Scissors, you’ll need to find the right balance. Of course, with poker it’s much more complicated, based on many different factors including your opponent.

Whilst the perfect balance may be to bluff the river 33% of the time, it wouldn’t make sense to bluff an opponent you know will call you 100% of the time. In this case you can only raise your value hands and check your weaker hands.

Gto Definition For Poker

However, if this opponent notices that you only ever bet on the river with value hands, so starts folding, they are exploiting your play. You could then start to bluff the river, exploiting their play, until they figure out you are bluffing. After they figure out you only bluff the river, you could revert back to GTO of 33% bluff, 33% value, 33% check making us much tougher to play against. Again, we can deviate from GTO where doing so makes sense.

Poker Gto Definition

GTO is really not too important at lower stakes games, but is important for high stakes, nosebleed games and high rollers. For most of us, whilst it’s good knowledge to have, it’s probably not as important as balancing our value bets, bluffs and calls to exploit our opponents.